


Teach

by nakedhelot



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: AU, Gen, I really wanted this to be pre-slash but it probably isnt, Just read into things with slash goggles guys, Kagami a year younger than the GoM, Kagami being a shortie cutie patootie who got his growth spurt way too late, Kagami calling Midorima MIDO-SEN, Midorima being a thug, Takao being hawk, Teenagers really, midotaka bromance feels, oaihaioshdoishoiahsdsado FEELS, ugh midokaga feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 08:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nakedhelot/pseuds/nakedhelot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They gathered at centre court, Takao threw the ball up and it disappeared into the dark gaps between constellations before shooting down in a blur of dark red and faded grey lines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teach

**Author's Note:**

> This began as me wanting MidoKaga. More importantly, wanting cutie patootie, teeny weeny Kagami and tsun tsun tsunderemazing Midorima. Then it CHANGED and I think I'm feeding my own life problems into it but WHATEVER MAN. That summary is way too serious from the initial mood I had planned for this thing. Which was, hm, cracky wacky.

Takao was making fun of him, lips pursed and eyes blown wide open. He looked at the pink plastic pony in his right hand, the garish rainbow tail much bushier than what he held in his bandaged left. Kagami Taiga had just blinked up at him and grinned like a fool, “That just means double the luck, Mido-sen!” before blushing, shaking his head and running off waving.

“Ugh,” He shoved the crayon smudged toy in his bag, he did not want to look strange, after all.

 

 

-

 “So what the deal with that kid, Shin-chan?” Takao's upside-down face leered, “This has been happening for a few weeks now!”

 “Teikou annihilated the international school he went to... honestly I thought I'd lost him now that I'm in high school.”

 “Uwah... Shin-chan has an admirer! As expected from a genius of the Generation of Miracles, uwah!”

 He blinked _harder_. The wonky, rusty legs of Takao's desk made the most irritating noises, as he buried his head in his arms, sniggering.

 

 

 -

 “Mido-sen!” He shut his eyes and fought the urge to whip off his sunglasses and massage the bridge of his nose. It was the _weekend._ Instead, his right hand shot-out “Hand it over then,”

 “...”

 Kagami Taiga was _sniffling_ at him. In the middle of summer.

 “M-Mido-sen, 'm sorry...”

 Midorima dropped his shoulders, he did not know how to handle snivelling kids. Never mind that Kagami Taiga was only a year and a bit younger than him, the boy looked like a _ten year old_.

 “...the only eight-handed elephant statues I could find were...too... expensive...” his lip was curled in some kind of complicated fashion and Midorima could not deal with this right now.

 “It's fine kid, I would actually prefer if you ceased this non-sense and focus more on your studies, or something.” He wanted to get a move-on, hopefully he would secure the park-courts without having to expose himself to cheap _macho_ exchanges with the street rats.

 “BUT WHAT ABOUT YOUR LUCK?!” was this boy _shouting_ at him?

 “MY LUCK IS FINE, LOOK HERE, I HAVE TODAY'S LUCKY ITEM, YOU'RE HELP IS UNNECESSARY!” and he stomped off. His mental age was going down, he needed some shiruko.

 Kagami followed him, sulking all the way.

 “Ugh.”

 

 

 -

 “Why are you doing this.” He sat down next to the boy on the bench, 300 straight three-pointers was enough for a short break.

 Kagami pouted at him. _Children_. “Doing what?”

 “Being a general nuisance to myself.” 

“Because you're such a weirdo off-court, but when you play, you become, like, really, _really_ cool.” 

“ _HAAH?!_ ”

“I'm small, ya know,” the kid made an ironic face at himself, an expression Midorima would have never related to Kagami Taiga otherwise. “People can't imagine me on a court, especially not at my school where there are so many tall people with foreign blood.”

Midorima thinks of Akashi, short but... ugh... he thinks of Kuroko, who was even more of an outlier, he lasted a while, hmm. “Maybe you're just not good enough.” He suggests casually with a sip of water.

Kagami looked nothing short of affronted. Before jumping up to his full one-hundred and sixty centimetre height. He stumbled slightly. “I'M HEAPS GOOD, THAT MAKES IT SO MUCH WORSE. I'M HEAPS, HEAPS, _HEAPS_ GOOD AND THEY WONT EVEN LET ME ON THE COURT! LIKE I'M ACTUALLY NOT ALLOWED ON THE BASKETBALL COURTS AT SCHOOL! THEY BANNED ME, MIDO-SEEEENNNN!” Midorima imagined the fuss Kagami would have kicked up, and he could put no blame on the school administration.

But, he looks at Kagami again, who looked a little frailer, a little more stretched out than before. He squints, is he imagin- no. One-hundred and sixty centimetres. “You've grown.”

Kagami pauses his tirade, then settles into a smug posture. “Ah, so you've noticed, Mido-sen. Ten centimetres since last week! Alex says I'm finally hitting my growth spurt.” Kagami smiles.

...Hm. “OK, show me what you've got then,” the boy's jaw drops as the basketball hits him in the face.

“Or not.”

Kagami scrambles for the ball, stumbling over his own feet. “NO, NO, MIDO-SEN LET'S PLAY. PLEASE.” Midorima tries not to laugh at Kagami's far too belated attempts at courtesy.

In the end, Kagami is throttled. His footwork is sloppy (This growth spurt is making me walk weird, Mido-sen, bear with me, please!), his handling suffers as a result, he couldn't get a single drive past Midorima, and his shooting, is not something that Midorima wants to even think about. There was absolutely no indicator of potential, except for naïve enthusiasm, and yet... Midorima couldn't honestly write the boy off completely.

 

 

-

“...Really? You _sincerely_ don't find him impressive?”

“Well, yeah, he's good. A genius, alright. But I don't like him.”

“I thought his style would be more suited to your tastes.”

“He looks like he'd rather be sleeping. What kind of style is that. You're much better, Mido-sen.”

 

 

-

Kagami has stopped giving him lucky-items. He has also grown another 15 cm in less than three weeks. Takao has stopped treating him like some kind of caricature and has actually started conversing with him. “Ne, Kagami-kun. Stop growing! You'll be taller than me soon!” Which was two parts bitter and one part scared.

Midorima was looking at him in disgust. “Fifteen burgers are not the proper food for a _serious athlete,_ Kagami.”

Kagami peered at him over his bulging bag of burgers, and with his stuffed cheeks replied “Don't give me that, Mido-sen, I'm so hungry and tired all the time, I would have stomach aches if I ate wholesome food. All I need are calories right now!”

“Hmph, are you allowed on the courts yet?”

“The shortest guy on our team is 183cm, that's another 8cm away, Mido-sen!”

“I'm not playing against you until you've had some proper practice.”

“I practice everyday!”

“With people who have tournament experience.”

Kagami furiously bit into his ninth burger. (“183cm, seriously, Kagami- _chan_?!”)

 

 

-

“Ah... he's good too, I'd like to play him one day...”

Kagami lifted himself from the railing, and stretched out. Midorima guessed 185cm. Hm, well, he already had his shoes on, and the hall was emptying rapidly of the squealing girls who had filled it impressively for a preliminary high-school tournament match.

“You'll have to content yourself with me, for today.”

Kagami's face stilled, before splitting into a shit-eating smirk. “Are you sure, Mido-sen? You played _so well_ today, aren't you _tired_?” Midorima was positive his glasses were fogging up. This cheeky... a measly growth spurt and he was already acting like _this?_ Midorima was going to take this little boy to _school_.

He took off his glasses and cleaned them. 

“Let's see if you've gone further than twenty-five centimetres of progress, Kagami- _chan_.”

 

 

-

“Shiruko is _hardly_ the proper food source for _serious athletes_ , Midorima-senpai,” Kagami sneered between huffing.

“Be quiet, I wiped the floor with your burger-stuffed below.” (“Pfft! _Burger-stuffed below?_ Seriously, Shin-chan?!”)

“Jeeze, no need to get so riled up about it, Mido-sen...” 

Midorima was worked up about something else. Kagami had, yes, suffered inarguable, total, defeat. With a score of 40 to 1. 

But that is 40 to 1 against a genius of the Generation of Miracles. Midorima was used to one-on-ones that ended with 108 to 0 scoreboards. His long-range capability, and high angled shot's alone made him almost untouchable in that respect. 

Kagami had scored 1 against him. Kagami who had never been taken seriously on any court, as a middle school student who, for the most part stood at one-hundred and fifty centimetres. Maybe he had some secret history, maybe he was coached by a WNBA veteran, had a big brother who knew some moves. But those numbers were still an anomaly that Midorima couldn't ignore.

“Ah... Shin-chan...” 

“M-Mido-sen,”

When did he get so close? He was basically staring Kagami down. (He was _still_ staring Kagami down, from a nice, lofty perspective. Good.)

He still had room to _grow_.

“Kagami.”

“Ah, yes?” His face was still flushed, but his chest had stopped heaving and he was dropping into that strange pattern of pseudo-polite speech.

“Next year, _do not come to Shuutoku_.” 

 

 

-

(Kagami looked shattered as Midorima boarded the rickshaw. One corner of Takao's lips lifted, sinister. “It's really a good thing, Kagami. Think about it. Under the grey of the flickering street lights, Takao's eyes gleamed golden.)

-

Seirin was a _baby_ in the grand scheme of things, Kuroko going there made absolute sense. He flourished in the team and the team flourished with him. But Teppei's crook knee was only going to get them so far, and the best they could do was the quarter-finals of the winter-cup which they lost, devastated, exhausted from previous games and being stretched too far, too thin. Kuroko sobbed his eyes out as Kiyoshi Teppei was carried out by a stretcher in the first minute of the 4 th quarter. 

The final scoreboard was 169 to 36.

With the way they were, Midorima marvelled that Seirin had managed this far.

Aomine Daiki did not even enter the sports hall. 

 

 

-

They say goodbye to the graduating members before walking home.

It doesn't take long before the silence transforms into the furious sounds of sneakers and a basketball slapping against the concrete with little rhythm and too much power. The alcohol Miyaji-senpai had shoved down their throats tasted strange with salt water. Miyaji-senpai had slurred, snotty and wet-cheeked, and ever-glugging down any type of intoxication he could get his hands on, beer, sake, vodka, cheap gin, box-and-bag wine (his father cheering them on in their misdemeanour saying something about rites-of-passage and ugh pass me another of, whatever that is).

“ _Do you taste that, Midorima, Takao, the rest of you first year scum? DO YOU TASTE THAT? How does that taste to you? Does it taste good? NO! IT TASTES LIKE FUCKING SHIT. WORSE THAN SHIT. RIGHT NOW, WHAT YOUR SWALLOWING, WHAT YOUR ARE GULPING DOWN LIKE THIRSTY WHORES IS THE SALTY, BITTER,_ BURNING _SENSATION OF_ _ **DEFEAT**_ _. REMEMBER IT WELL. NOW, REPEAT AFTER ME. I WILL, NEVER AGAIN, DRINK THIS_ _ **RAKUZAN PISS**_ _, OR SO HELP ME GOD I WILL THROW MYSELF INTO THE FIERY PITS OF MOUNT ASAMA._ ”

 

 

-

_(Hear, Hear son. Hear, hear.)_ They drink until their lungs are about to burst. Then they drink some more.

 

 

-

When they get to the park-courts, clouds of exertion puffing into vision, the sound of dribbling reaches their ears.

“ _Nooooo, not tonight......nnn,”_

Midorima doesn't care, it doesn't sound like there's many of them at all. He could take them, he _needed_... needed _something_.

A basketball hits him square in the face and knocks his glasses off. He stumbles upright. Forget the ball, forget the glasses. He was going to teach this _ruffian_ a lesso-, ugh what was he doing, he didn't...

“Midorima-senpai. Wake up, please.”

When his vision refocuses, he is looking straight into Kagami Taiga's eyes. (And his strange eyebrows.) Takao is laid across the bench, asleep, perhaps.

Kagami looks ready to shove his glasses, thankfully undamaged, into his hands, “Your lucky item for today, Mido-sen, where is it?”

He snatches his glasses back, puts them on aggressively- his nose aches somewhat and steals the ball from Kagami, bouncing it, trying to get some kind of regular rhythm through this haze of inebriation.

“I threw it away. It obviously was of no help today.”

“Ah, maybe it would have been better if I gave you mine, for double the luck...”

Midorima's ball stalled for a second.

“But no, that's not the case is it.”

Kagami looked, imbalanced, as he walked to Takao's bench, his bag was on the floor. His sullen mood was pissing Midorima off even more, he wasn't here for this, _goddamnit._ He would give Kagami several pieces of his mind, then he would start a game. Yes.

Kagami leaned his head against Takao's thigh, and those yellow eyes blinked to half-mast.

“I'm playing regularly with the team at school, but not on it. They say it's too far down the road for a new player. They say, right now, they can handle it without me. Apparently semi-finals is good enough, this year. How annoying. I'm not good enough, they'll never be good enough (and it was true, Midorima remembers the slight excitement of Teikou vs an International School. Remembers the disappointment of such a _boring_ game. Doesn't remember the match at all.), you're not good enough.”

Midorima could see Kagami reacting to Takao's tensing leg. The ball rolled away as he hauled Kagami up. Kagami's feet were both flat on the ground. Takao did not stop him.

Kagami Taiga was looking straight at him. Hands as large as his own, fingers just as long gripping his biceps nothing like half-hearted or weak.

“Isn't it great? This feeling of a hunger so fucking massive that you're the furthest thing from empty. How much left we all have to grow. We're nothing, and out there is everything and they won't know what hit them until they're at our _feet_.” Kagami's eyes shone blood and mania.

Midorima punched him, broke skin on both Kagami's face, and his knuckles. “You don't know _anything_ kid.” He wanted to crush this thick skull, so he squeezed these cheeks that had chiselled off this past year, and Midorima knew he could no longer call Kagami Taiga a child. But, still.

Taiga bared a mouth full of fangs. “Not yet.”

Midorima dropped him and Taiga circled around him, like a suspicious, starving animal as he retrieved the ball. “But I will. I'll know it all, the highs, the lows. I'll have everything.” That ball that had once looked so disproportionately huge in Taiga's hands fit so easily in the middle of a palm. Takao was bent, tense, at the sidelines, looking high and blown to stardust. Taiga launched the ball at him and Takao caught it, single-handedly without looking from the future that suddenly burst out before him. There's still two years left. Thinking of all the cells that die and regenerate in the body, thinking of _Kagami Taiga_ , and two years could have you somewhere you never thought possible. In two years you could have _it_ , you could have more than everything.

They gathered at centre court, Takao threw the ball up and it disappeared into the dark gaps between constellations before shooting down in a blur of dark red and faded grey lines. 

 

 

-

“Ne, Kagami-kun. How long did you wait for us?”

“I knew you guys were going out for drinks, so I went home and had dinner first, then I played for about five hours. Then you finally came”

“Uwa- you really are a basketball idiot.”

“Shut-up." 

“... Shiruko in the morning, Shin-chan?!”

“I believe I have exerted myself properly and hence my consumption of Shiruko this particular morning will not be detrimental to my health.”

“Ugh, but how. Shin-chan, the hangover is finally hitting me.”

“Hmph.”

“Just, watch the sunrise guys. This is supposed to be symbolic, or some shit.”

“Your language is-”

“Yeah, it'd be some way to end this past 24 hours and it'll add to our teenage experience bucket list, ugh but that sun is too bright, why...” Takao slumped into the basketball on his lap as Kagami lifted his head from his own ball.

“Oh yeah, here.”

Midorima found two gold general shogi pieces in his hand.

“Just as a keepsake.”

Midorima pinched the bruise forming on on Kagami's face.

 

 

-

[I made it into Seirin]

[Continue to take care of me this school year, please.]

[Actually forget that]  
  
[Prepare yourself, Mido-sen.]

[This year, I'll teach you _all_.]

**Author's Note:**

> I just needed Mido/Kaga, and this isn't even romantic, but I'LL TAKE WHAT I CAN, EVEN IF I'M TAKING IT FROM MYSELF. And yes that is the worst title ever, but I'M NOT SORRY. I feel that Kagami's character development was really rapid, so I read over it, and although there's still an inkling of that notion, it still felt right (as in it still felt the way I wanted it to feel) so I changed nothing.  
> I would like to shout-out to half-sleeping because MidoKaga ;-;


End file.
